


down the rabbit hole

by sensibleshroom



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Bashing, Canon Typical Violence, Feral Behavior, Fluff and Angst, I'm Sorry, Major Original Character(s), Multi, Not!akin, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Self-Insert, Shenakakins: now with 100 percent less Anakin, This is a trainwreck and I'm not sorry, Time Travel Fix-It, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, canon typical dismemberment, naps as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:47:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29361261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensibleshroom/pseuds/sensibleshroom
Summary: When the Chosen One is no longer the Chosen One, but they still have the Chosen One's connection to the Force, at what point do we panic?The answer is at the beginning.Alternatively: a 22 year old college student dies in our world, and wakes up free falling through Coruscant, screaming and crying, and everything gets worse from there. Rip Anakin, it's time to let someone else have the main character role.Thank the Force for a lightsaber sparring club.
Relationships: Original Non-Binary Character/Tae Diath, Shaak Ti & Original Character(s)
Comments: 61
Kudos: 103





	1. Chapter 1

Generally speaking, when one thought of dying, they thought of ascension. It was a fairly natural and progressive thought, of course, propped up by millennia of thoughts of the heavens, and it was where Alice Diggory’s mind had gone the second their old, beat up, red Camaro with an excessively high insurance premium had gotten rammed by a runaway truck at a stoplight.

They didn’t have any _reason_ to believe in ascension, for a variety of reasons. The chief reason was that he had not been someone that thought very long and hard about the _after,_ or even the _before._ The here and now was hard enough to deal with, thank you kindly. Insurance and work and school and all in the name of a future they didn’t truly pay much mind to beyond occasional wistful thinking to get them out of bed. The secondary reason was that, well, they were about _average._ Kind, when it suited them, sweet, when they wanted to be, annoying most of the time, with their only claim to any sort of legacy being an old, worn out Jaster Mereel post from 2019 that had been circulated maybe four times and forgotten. Some fanfiction, some unfinished group projects, and _man_ were they going to be scrambling when they realized Alice wasn’t there to do the bulk of the work, a socially distanced funeral put together by a father who was going to be upset, slap an old name they never legally changed for the sake of keeping his insurance on the tombstone, cry over some pictures, and then he’d keep moving.

His mother might be upset, but his mother was upset over a lot of things, and he had made her cry plenty of times already.

There was that regret. Even if she’d _also_ be using the wrong name, too. Honestly, Alice had even picked a _girl’s_ name. What was everyone so worked up about, anyways?

Alice hadn’t thought about ascension, in any case, to get back to the topic at hand, but he had also not really put much thought into _descension._ Descension at literal subsonic speeds, or so he thought, the heat of desert forgotten as he plummeted in clothes he had _not_ been wearing five minutes ago between speeding and blaring cars that were _apparently fucking floating,_ and this _had_ to be a hallucination, but he didn’t have the time to think about that, because he was screaming at the top of his lungs and flailing, an unnatural sense overtaking him that felt a lot like _laughter,_ a lot like a _nudge,_ awareness he didn’t understand flooding his body with pressing, crushing pressure, pushing him down with the gravity, and he was _screeching._ Just fully screaming, and he hadn’t even been _screaming in the car and---_

_Thunk._

A high pitched whine overtook him as he smacked his head on smooth metal and lifted his head, eyes wide as he clung to sleek, green painted lines, and his eyes met the eyes of a woman across from him as his mouth dropped open in unabashed shock.

“Zam Wessel?” He shouted, and her face turned to sheer _alarm,_ plunging them forward in a stomach dropping dive. With another yelp, he slid down the length of the car… _speeder,_ this was a _speeder,_ what the _fuck_ was going on---

“Yo, Jango is about to shoot you!” He called, because that was the first thought that came to his mind. “You should like… stop? Before I throw up??”

“Karking _Jedi,_ ” Zem Wesell, that was _Zam Wesell,_ swore, and a ringing blast they’d heard a million times before rang out as she _shot at him._

He wasn’t handling this great. They definitely weren’t handling this great, but the good old customer service skills kicked in, and he screamed before ducking and shouting, bold and loud for all to hear, “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience, but I need you to stop!”

The speeder jerked, and he slid back down towards the front of the speeder, trying to remember when the _hell_ they had last watched the prequels and what the _hell_ had happened next. He normally had the dialogue memorized front and back, able to quote it from memory, and…

Ah, yes, Obi-Wan drinks on the job and gets offered drugs. Right. That was supposed to happen, but how the _hell_ was he supposed to survive until that point? This was _Coruscant traffic,_ and they had just died, and it had sucked, and been awful, and he was _pretty fucking sure_ he was in Anakin Skywalker’s weird, gangly, teenager body, judging from the voice and his _weirdly_ large hands and legs that were just _way_ too long. Which meant the body had to _stay intact,_ or…

Or the Emperor wasn’t going to commit multiple genocides and then get thrown into a pit by his apprentice a few blown up planets and a destroyed democracy later?

Wait. Wait, he couldn’t be thinking about this right now. Wait. Wait.

“I need a pause button! Where the _fuck_ is the controller?” He screeched, because how else was he supposed to respond to this? “Pause! End simulation! _Stop!_ ”

"What the hells is wrong with you?" The Clawdite demanded, and Alice's mouth just dropped open, and then they just _screeched_ incoherently. The blaster rang out again, and some sort of instinct overtook them, prompting them to just _slide down and hang off the wing so she couldn't hit him._

It felt like something was laughing at him, and his eyes widened as he realized they were plummeting directly at that _damned_ club he remembered from the movies, and something took hold of his limbs. With grace he definitely did not possess on a good day, he worked at a _call center,_ come _on,_ he threw his body up and over, wind whipping past him as he landed solidly on the top of the speeder, a delicate weight in his hand as he flipped the saber around, flicked a switch he only had memorized from the damn sparring club, and white hot heat sprang to life in a span and a hiss as he plunged the blade directly down through the cockpit and into the controls. There was a burst of fire, and the engine stuttered, and instinct overtook him again, prompting him to just _lunge_ free. A gather of some power his body knew to touch, but his mind didn't know how to operate, and his legs flexed as he leapt clear of the spiraling out of control speeder.

_'Oh, fuck, oh, no, no, no,'_ his mind screamed as he sprang free, the ground rushing up on him, because he had run a _lightsaber club,_ and he knew how to use a saber and that was _it._ With a half bitten back scream, he hit the ground and plunged forward in a roll, head over heels, over and over on the ground before he crashed into the wall, legs up and back flat on the ground as he just _breathed_ for a second, staring up at neon lights as he panted and panted and tried to understand what the _fuck_ was going on.

He laid there for a moment, gasping for air, lightsaber hilt that hummed wrong and didn't feel _right_ in his hand, staring up at Coruscant traffic, and there was a scuff of boots behind him.

"Anakin. Where are your shields?"

Alice's eyes drifted back and up to see the figure of Obi-Wan Kenobi looming over them, and a tiny, wounded sound escaped their lips.

"I dropped them?"

Why the _fuck_ did they spend their hyperfixation time trying to figure out which Queen of Naboo got pregnant to fix the timeliness discrepancies and not dedicate _any of that energy to learning Aurebesh?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At some point I need to stop letting discord enable me. Welcome to self insert hell, this is going to be a trainwreck.


	2. Chapter 2

Most fic writers have a full list of things they would fix in the months leading to the clone wars. They may not write it down, but they have the list in their head. It varies depending on what bullshit ship they pull out of their ass, what era they want to write in, what characters they’re emotionally attached to to an unhealthy degree, whether they’re firmly in the Mandalorian, Jedi, or Maul camp, because there is only one Palpatine/Sith camp, and that camp is canon. The list varies depending on what ideas they have in their head, but it always exists.

Alice Diggory, also known as ‘jestermereelfxcker69’, had been firmly in the Mandalorian camp, for obvious reasons. They had _dabbled_ in Jedi, and had a few ideas floating here and there about Feral, but they had primarily lived in ‘pre-Korda-6 hell’, and refused to dig themself out of it for an ungodly amount of time.

They were also realizing, with a dead, cooling body of a Clawdite in front of them, that they should have spent a lot more time thinking about Zam Wesell. Their tongue was firmly lodged in their throat, cotton and solid, and they were just staring and staring, like she was going to miraculously wake up.

When they were a kid, they had read the Junior Boba Fett books. They’d never reread them as an adult, rarely ever spared a thought to how fucked up it was that Jango had not only killed his friend, but one of the few people he allowed around his son, who his son actually _liked._

And she was dead. And not a fictional character. A real actual person, dead in front of them as Obi-Wan straightened up to watch Jango Fett fly off.

Alice was going to be sick.

“Anakin, that was reckless,” Obi-Wan said, dart in his hand, and Alice tore their gaze off her body to trail over Obi-Wan, eyes blurring and unfocused.

“The dart is Kaminoan,” he blurted, and then flushed up to his temples, and Obi-Wan blinked at him. “That’s what Dex is going to tell you. Kaminoan.”

“How would you know that?” Obi-Wan asked. “You haven’t even looked at it.”

“... Lower levels?” Alice tried weakly, and Obi-Wan stared at them incredulously.

“What were you doing in the lower levels that left you knowing about poisonous darts?”

“...” Wait, was it fanon or canon that Palpatine had Padawan Anakin running missions on the lower levels? _Fuck,_ they should have given more of a fuck about the source material. All of that time sorting through Wookiepedia and they couldn’t even pick up a book. “... Stuff?”

“And what on _earth_ is Kamino?”

“... Where the breadcrumbs go?”

Obi-Wan was staring at Alice in mute dumbfoundedness, and Alice stared back, intensely set off at how they had to look down to meet his gaze. Slowly, their apparent master blinked, and they blinked back before he reached out to put the back of a hand on their forehead.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were running a fever?” He demanded, and Alice slowly blinked. They were running a fever? Must be hell on the body to yeet the wrong damn consciousness into a body.

“... I forgot?”

Obi-Wan stared at them in long suffering agony, and they tried to remember another actual Human person touched them. It was just them in their apartment, no cats, no pets, working from home, and oh, that hurt worse than they realized. It had been what, a year? No visiting family, no visiting friends, no nothing, and his gentle, platonic touch was sending ice cubes skittering down their spine as they tried to figure out how to _react_ to someone touching them and walking through crowded clubs without a mask and not standing six feet apart in a grocery store line and not glaring at people sticking their noses out from the top of cloth maks and…

“Let’s get you back to the Temple and a hypospray in you,” he decided, and they swam back down to the confusing present. “I’ll inform Padmé to keep an eye on her aides and guards for any fevers or symptoms.”

“... Right,” Alice said weakly, and Obi-Wan sighed, looking down at the body at their feet.

“Senseless waste,” he muttered and turned on his heel, clearly expecting Alice to follow, and they drifted after him, lost and confused as they tried to recall everything they would expect a character to do in this situation. There wasn’t a lot _to_ be done. They would never put a character in another character’s body, not without keeping the second person in there to talk them through a problem. Though, maybe…

They turned their focus inward, using that weird _awareness_ that felt like someone had slapped a second set of eyes on them, and tried to grasp it. It flowed easily into their control, gentle and willing, like a warm towel fresh out of the dryer, like they were an old friend who was expected home a year ago, and they took it, held it, let it balance in their internal hand before they… _pushed._

It was a nudge, more than anything. A question, a request, and the Force, it was the _fucking Force,_ ebbed and swayed, before returning a gentle, teasing no, like Anakin Skywalker wasn’t just _gone,_ never to be seen again likely, dead, for all accounts and purposes, leaving Alice in his wake. It felt a little like the sense of _rightness_ over a spread of tarot, a surety following the sway of a pendant as it told them yes or no, and they released it, never one to hold on too long or read too much into it.

The Force didn’t mourn. Why would it? It had no concept of death, not like mortals. But Anakin was gone, and Alice was in a body on easy mode, that was way too tall, in a universe they weren’t supposed to be in, and if this was an afterlife, this was not a very good one. Everything felt like their head was in a fishbowl, and they couldn’t breathe. They were just staring out the curves, the bright neon lights, wondering where the soft street lamps went, why everything was so _high pitched,_ and what was that constant, unending drone? It was making their head hurt. They didn’t like it. Was that the generators? How did people _deal_ with that? They missed their headphones. Were there even _headphones_ in the gffa? They were going to be dying again if there were no headphones.

The city was _loud._ There was a quiet, humming buzz all around them, reverberating like bone conduction headphones, and they found very quickly that they _didn’t like it._ It was just _slightly_ too high a frequency, and whatever was used for the neon lights buzzed in their eardrums, discordant and off in some way that made their stomach twist, and there was some other sense that was permeating everything. It felt muted, like something was pushing it away, but the only way Alice could describe it was…

_More._

There was so much _more,_ and they couldn’t quite put into words what it _felt_ like. Once upon a time, they had tried to change the battery in their car, before they were any good at electrical wiring, and they had shocked themself. It felt like that, a little, without the pain, but the jolt of something that _did not belong,_ and yet their body knew intimately, considering the Human body ran on electrical impulses to process commands to their limbs and whatnot.

There were no real words for the awareness. It was like eyes on them, ice down their spine, their head dunked in cold water, and yet it was _so burning hot._ And Alice knew heat. They had grown up in Arizona, in the United States, just forty minutes outside of the Phoenix metropolitan area, close enough for shopping in the summer, when the pavement was hot enough to fry an egg and if you left the car too long you had to use the hem of your shirt to pull the handle, and gods help you if you had leather seats.

They resolutely refused to live in the valley, and for good reason. _Freeways._ Horrid.

But this heat was like how you felt _inside,_ when it got especially nasty outside. Miasma, twisting malaise, a sense of danger that if you spent too long in it, heat stroke would be taking you over. They had no idea how you were supposed to hydrate against the Force. There were shields, they knew, but all of this was new. They’d never _had_ a heat stroke, of course. They’d been born and raised in Arizona, from a long line of rodeo champs and ranch hands, not that their mother ever let them around that family. They had been raised from a young age to drink from the hose, slather on sunscreen, seek out shade like a heat seeking missile, come in for light snacks, know when the concrete was too hot for bare feet even as they walked over gravel without so much as a sock on.

They didn’t know how to handle this kind of heat, and it was almost panic inducing as their brain went a million miles a minute trying to figure out what the _fuck_ was happening. There was a presence in that heat, like a cool balm, smelling faintly of aloe vera, and it reached out to them with a nudge, a gentle pressure on the burning core that was rapidly overtaking their senses and threatening to completely shut them down.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, and _oh,_ that was _him._ He was the aloe vera. “What happened to your shields? You’re all over. Are you alright?”

“No,” Alice squeaked, trying desperately to remember how canon Anakin acted even as they came up to the yellow speeder that they once had a figurine of when they were seven. “I, uh, don’t feel alright?”

Fuck, they were so _tall._

“I think we need to take you to Master Che,” Obi-Wan said dubiously. “I’ll comm Mace to send over another Knight to watch the senator. You feel like Force exhaustion.”

“I do?” Alice asked weakly as they stared dubiously at the high sides. This was _not_ ADA compliant. Carefully, they lifted one long leg and tried to swing it over, only to overbalance and fall flat on their face into the smooth leather seat. “Oh.”

“Force, Anakin, why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” Obi-Wan demanded as he hopped into the driver side and tried to push them up. They were about compliant to the manhandling as jello, sliding here and there, entirely given up on this body as he manipulated them through Force shoves and hands to sit _up._

“Didn’t know?” They were _just_ dead, in their defense.

“You’re burning up. We’re going to Master Che,” Obi-Wan decided, and Alice let out a noise of dismay. “Your signature is entirely off.”

“What’d’I feel like?” They murmured faintly as he pushed them up and slumped against the wall of the speeder. They _would_ say door, but the thing didn’t even _have_ them, and who designed this thing?

… They had always wondered what they’d feel like in the Force. They even took online quizzes about it.

“... Warm,” Obi-Wan replied, and they focused their eyes long enough to look at him as he stared at them in mute confusion. “Did you hit your head on the way down?”

“... Yes.” A concussion could explain the personality change, right? Wait, would that show up on scans?

“Did you _really?_ ”

“Well, I _could_ have,” because they definitely did in the _car._ And who knew how many times Anakin hit his head in a day? Big ass beanpole bitch.

Oh, fuck. Now _they_ were a big ass beanpole bitch. How were they supposed to be a little bastard _now?_ They needed to get out of this body, stat. Where was a Chosen One when you _needed_ them?

… _Was that them now?_

_No, this was_ **_not fucking happening._ **

“What’s wrong?” Obi-Wan asked in alarm, and Alice abruptly realized they had no idea how to build a shield, and the Force apparently had them on easy mode, or their brains would be out of their ears, but they were projecting _everything._

“I’m having a crisis,” they said faintly, staring with wide eyes at the traffic that had just nearly fucking killed them.

“That’s normal, but what _sort_ of crisis?”

“You ever feel like you narrowly avoided the jaws of death, except maybe you _didn’t,_ and everything seems like a dream, and you aren’t sure at what point you need to panic or if this is a ‘start panicking and keep going for the whole thing and pray you don’t f… kark it up too badly as you’re internally and probably audibly screaming for the foreseeable future and wow, you might be hilariously unqualified for the current position you’re in’?”

It was all in a rush, and Obi-Wan stared at them in silence, blinking a few times as his mouth opened and shut, and Alice gave him a small smile that _might_ be a grimace, eyes wide and unfocused as they balled their hands up in the soft, loose leggings on their legs.

“Should we go back to the temple now?” They asked, their voice cracking, several octaves too high, and Obi-Wan slowly nodded.

“I think you might need a nap.”

“Yeah… Me, too.” They were _this close_ to bursting into tears. It was _definitely_ nap time.

* * *

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi was half hauling a practically liquid Padawan Anakin Skywalker into the temple. Nico didn’t often bring Tae back to the Temple, as most of their time doing whatever struck Nico or Knol’s fancy out in the Outer Rim, with the occasional addition of Fay or Jon to the mix, but every so often something necessitated an in-person report. Currently, there were downright _concerning_ Separatist movements out there, and though they focused on forgotten non-Republic citizens, it was starting to get a tad concerning.

Tae wasn’t there for the late night report, had been dismissed after about the second row with Nico and Ki-Adi Mundi, so instead he was here. Sitting among the pillars in the opening hall, watching Master Kenobi try to haul a progressively more liquidated Padawan Skywalker away from the Healing Halls and towards the living quarters. It was a bit amusing. Kenobi’s thoughts were a tangle of concern and frustration, whereas Skywalker could only be compared to a long, continuous scream. He was almost concerned someone had drugged a… what was Skywalker now, seventeen? Eighteen?

In any case, Skywalker was _losing_ his mind. Tae had never met him face-to-face, but he had the pleasure of feeling his overwhelming Force presence hit him in the face every time he came back to Coruscant, and it was always appropriately awful. He didn’t know how temple Jedi managed it on a daily basis, but it was probably part of the reason the legendary Kenobi-Skywalker duo was so often on mission. Though, normally Skywalker at least _tried_ to contain it. Whatever had hit him had completely obliterated his shields, and…

Skywalker’s eyes met his in the shadows, and widened considerably, partially in horror as a single thought speared through the borderline incoherence in some language that was trying its hardest to be Basic and failing miserably.

_‘Tae Diath???_ **_FUCK!!!_ ** _’_

Tae’s brow slowly lifted, and then some kind of… jingle overtook the chaos, drowning everything else out. Anakin Skywalker shouldn’t know him, but…

_‘Don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious, d-don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious--- holy fuck what--- can he_ **_hear me??? FUCK!!!_ ** _Don’t be suspicious… clap, you gotta clap there, wait, focus, Alice you_ **_idiot,_ ** _please, stay on focus, don’t look at me, don’t listen, d-don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious--- stay on target, we’re too close! Stay on target, holy fuck not the_ **_time,_ ** _Alice.’_

That was about the moment that Tae realized that Anakin’s Force signature was… not right. He had been away from it for a very long time now, had never met the fabled Chosen One in person, but perhaps the distance brought clarity, not unlike leaving a room with a candle burning and coming back to the scent when your nose had already reset. The Anakin _he_ remembered was a cold, dying star. Perhaps once heat was given off, blazing and unrelenting, but Tatooine had killed that heat long before the Jedi found him. He had felt like heavy gravity, drawing in everyone around him, a point where they all fell in orbit despite their best efforts.

This, though?

This wasn’t… something was _very_ wrong there, and Anakin was doing his absolute damndest to not even acknowledge Tae as Kenobi bodily lifted him, like a newborn calf on unsteady legs, and Tae rose to his feet with fluidity to match the other senior Padawan. A brief thought was sent to Nico down their bond, a faint image of a struggling Kenobi with a too-big, possibly drugged Skywalker, and Tae’s desire to help. There was a filter of amusement sent back to him, a shiver of ‘oh, there they go again’, and Tae filed it away as something to ask about later.

“Master Kenobi!” He called as he strode across the floor to them, and sheer panic spiked in Anakin, viciously shoved back down.

“Ah, hello, padawan,” Kenobi said sheepishly, like he hadn’t noticed Tae there, and he probably hadn’t. “I have my hands full at the moment, but if you need help with something---”

“I actually wanted to offer my assistance,” Tae said slyly, and offered an arm. “Senior Padawan Tae Diath, sir. You probably haven’t seen me in several years.”

“Ah! Master Diath’s padawan! Back on Coruscant?” Master Kenobi asked politely, like he didn’t have two armfuls of padawan trying to melt into the floor and get away, and Tae tilted his head, blinking down at Anakin that didn’t _feel_ like Anakin.

“Yes. My master is occupied with the council, and I haven’t caught up with Anakin in some time. May I offer assistance?” He repeated, and Obi-Wan hesitated as Anakin clearly wrestled with a variety of conflicting emotions, most of them panic.

_‘He knows, oh gods, fuck,’_ and what _was_ that curse, _‘do I play it off? What does he want? I couldn’t even figure this shit out first? Really? Right now?’_

“Don’t be proud, padawan,” Obi-Wan chided, misinterpreting his reluctance, and hauled Anakin up higher. “Of course, Padawan Diath. We’d be delighted.”

“Wonderful,” Tae replied, with a grin that should have had sharper teeth, and came to Anakin’s other side to wrap his hand around his waist and _slightly_ squeeze, a tender warning to calm down.

Yes. Anakin definitely did feel different. What was once endless, heavy cold was now like a desert, with a gentle breeze, feeling vaguely like a home, but with a threat of a dangerous storm on the horizon that someone was resolutely ignoring until the last possible second. A word filtered across Tae’s thoughts, something he was unfamiliar with, but it was… _flashflood._ An image of some kind of speeders on wheels, caught in an overflow of water in a creekbed, the torrential waves dragging them away, abject horror and awe, and then the thought danced away as another thought practically shattered the air around them.

_‘TAJIKISTAN!!!’_

What the kriff was a Tajikistan?

It was probably not a good idea to do this in front of a master, but, hey. Tae had a feeling whoever this was was not used to Force suggestions, and sent a subtle shiver of calm over to the other padawan. Just as he thought, the other went a little boneless, probably a bit harder to lug around, but easier to just sit next to in the middle of his panic. There we go. Manageable.

“I do apologize for our general state of upheaval,” Master Kenobi huffed, and Tae looked over Anakin’s head at him. “Anakin is currently suffering from Force exhaustion. I understand this must look a little, ah…”

“We’ve all run into it,” Tae said cheerfully as he pulled Anakin a little closer, wondering vaguely who Alice was, if _Anakin_ was Alice. “I don’t mind. It’s been too long since Anakin and I have spoken.”

Anakin didn’t correct him, further cementing the growing suspicion in Tae’s bones, and Tae just smiled at Obi-Wan congenitally as he let Anakin’s head loll against his shoulder.

“Yes, it is unfortunate we are never at the temple at the same time,” Obi-Wan agreed. “I suppose we are all far too busy. You’ll have to exchange comm codes.”

“Comm codes,” Anakin mumbled and then _shuddered_ as the Force somehow _pulsed_ through his body, sending a shiver rolling down Tae’s spine. Yes, this one was going to need to get shields up, and soon.

And Tae… Well, he had time to waste. He could get to the bottom of this, if only to satiate his curiosity, as well as determine just _what_ was going on, because he was _decently_ certain some non-Jedi had been shoved into the Chosen One’s body and given the same connection to the Force, which begged the question of _where_ the padawan that was suspected to be the Chosen One actually _was,_ and how, well, screwed the entire galaxy was.

  
Because Tae was pretty damned sure they were screwed. Why he wasn’t saying anything to Master Kenobi was beyond him, but, hey. Nico had always taught him to make his own investigations and _then_ bring his findings to him. Really, Tae was just following protocol.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The trainwreck continues, and we get a second POV!!! Rip Alice. They're going to get a nice nap after talking with Tae...


	3. Chapter 3

Alice had no idea what this bed was made out of, but it  _ definitely _ was better than memory foam. If the Jedi were living like monks, what kind of beds did the galaxy  _ normally _ have? Jesus fucking Christ. Or maybe the Jedi believed in a good night’s sleep? Why hadn’t Alice devoted any headcanons to this? They devoted a  _ lot _ of headcanons to the Mereel-Fett armor quality, right down to the percentages, and  _ holy fuck if they made it to Kamino with Kenobi they could test that theory maybe and--- _

Stop. Stop, because Tae was  _ still _ in Anakin’s room, leaning against the door with his arms crossed, and something uncomfortable twisted in Alice’s gut at the memory of the comic panel where he died.

Tae blinked slowly, and color rose in Alice's cheeks as they toyed with the fastenings on their clothes, sitting up and staring down at their lap that shouldn’t be that far down.

“You’re not Anakin,” he said slowly, and the flush on their cheeks deepened as they plucked uselessly at the tabard.

“No,” they agreed, because lying was useless, he was a  _ fucking _ telepath. “I didn’t know you’d be here… I mean, Nico Diath never…”

“Came back to the Temple?” Tae asked, amusement arching in the room, and the full force of it hit Alice in the face, sending them swimming in confusion as they swayed on the bed. “Take it easy. Can’t imagine what it would be like to not be born with it and then get stuck in a body like  _ that. _ ”

“Well, it’s not unlike a week long coke binge,” Alice gasped as their eyes went unfocused. “Sorry. Spice?”

“... You went on spice binges?” Tae’s voice turned to one of alarm, and Alice barked out a harsh laugh.

“No. Figure of speech, sorry. How did you know I wasn’t Force sensitive before?”

“A Force sensitive would be handling this a lot better,” Tae said dryly. “You should lay down. Is your name Alice?”

“Yes, and I’m supposed to be  _ five foot two. _ Like, to this body’s nipples. So that’s part of the problem.” Alice promptly tipped over and hit the bed and then their eyes widened dramatically. “Think I can get away with saying I’m having a gender crisis, because I am  _ not _ going to be responding well to Anakin.”

“It’s normal,” Tae said and Alice hissed out in glee that they were  _ right _ about the trans thing. Of course the gffa had trans people! Jon Favreau better come through and…

Oh.

Oh, they likely wouldn’t live to see that.

Something a bit mournful hit them in the chest, and that was a stupid thing to be mournful about, but they were going to have to live in all of this.

Alice was someone that had already processed fast, possibly too fast, if we were being entirely honest. They had been here for approximately two hours, and maybe it was the hours of fanfiction and irritation with characters that didn’t  _ adjust fast enough, _ and that was enough time for them to realize they were… not going back. The gffa had always been an escape for them, nothing more, nothing less, and now that it  _ wasn’t _ an escape, now that they had to  _ live _ through it, in the worst possible body they could have picked, they didn’t even have  _ horns, _ dammit, they…

They were supposed to be meeting up for another socially distanced kata session. Tears started to well in their eyes at the realization that they were never going to see their friends again, that they were going to have to exist in a world with characters, characters they now had to view as real, living people, and…

“I just died,” they whispered, and Tae stilled. An image flashed between their minds, a car, a steering wheel, a red light that was run, blinding pain, sheer terror, blood leaking out on the airbag, dripping from their nose as they struggled to breathe while someone was trying to get them out, the sensation of suffocating, pain in their chest, their lung collapsing from the puncture, drowning on their own blood, and that had  _ just happened, _ and they…

“The Temple is good at absorbing emotions, but most of the work was done at the creche,” Tae said gently, and came to sit at their bedside. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No,” Alice choked out, images dancing in their mind of watching A New Hope for the very first time, playing Knights of the Old Republic, Battlefront, saving up all of their graduation money for an Ultrasaber and starting a sparring club at eighteen years old when they finally made it to Tucson. Four years of strictly doing exhibitions, not competition, competition moved too damn slow, mastering Makashi and Soresu, using their time on colorguard to make a version of tràkata that could be done without an actual blade, because they were  _ stubborn, _ dammit, and the loss was hitting them in the chest.

An image of a little girl switching their Aeon hilt on in awe, big brown eyes blown wide in glee before she promptly smacked Alice on the head, and they choked.

They were never going to see Julia again.

“I’m sorry,” Tae said softly as all of the important moments washed over Alice, hot and fast. Staying after class to use the whiteboard to scrawl out equations while their professor argued back and forth. The waiting masters degree under James’s purview, the horrendous online classes, their first successful robot that didn’t automatically die on them, the rush of glee at receiving their bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, the pride, soured by the wrong name on the diploma, the muted graduation party where the wrong name flew around, making every shot that much more bitter as they tried to cope, the…

Well. It wouldn’t all be missed, but it would be missed enough. They were going to be starting their masters in the summer. They were a  _ fucking mechanical engineer, _ and they had died at twenty-two years old, and this was… it.

A Jedi. They were supposed to  _ build robots. _ Move to Silicon Valley, begrudgingly deal with the dude bros and patagonia vests if it meant they got to start building a better future.

Tae slowly sat down next to them, and Alice choked on a sob as everything hit them at once, the sheer insanity of where they found themself. Already their scientific brain was trying to figure out the  _ how, _ but maybe the  _ why _ was a better question to ask. Why the fuck was this happening to them? They had  _ dreamed _ of being a Jedi, sure, and a Mandalorian, but in the same way a little boy  _ dreamed _ of being a princess. Nothing attainable, nothing specific, nothing that really meant anything beyond fanciful dreams. They had  _ dreamed _ of being an elf, too. Didn’t mean it was going to happen.

At least they still had toilet paper. Gods only knew they knew the terror of not having toilet paper after panic buying surge number one.

And now they had a fucking telepath in the bedroom with them, seeing all of this, their life literally flash before their eyes, and they couldn’t help but feel like so much of it was a fucking  _ waste. _

“I’m… not an expert, or a master,” Tae said hesitantly, and Alice curled in on themself, clutching at their sleeves, because comfort was not going to be found, not here. “But… It wasn’t all meaningless. Life isn’t meaningless. It’s precious.”

“I’m not a  _ Chosen One, _ ” Alice hissed, and Tae flinched as memories filtered past of what they remembered from canon, what they watched Anakin Skywalker become, what lengths he was driven to, what  _ war _ was coming in less than a week. “I’m a  _ vaccine scheduler. _ A  _ mechanical engineer. _ A  _ college student. _ ”

Tae was silent, swallowing as he tried to grapple with what kind of mess he had inadvertently walked into, and Alice pressed his face into the blankets, tried to take a shuddering, calming breath, to no avail. It was too much, all at once, and there was a gentle pressure against them, not felt physically, but felt in their  _ soul. _

“You don’t have to walk his path. You can walk away from all of this, right here, right now.”

Tears welled up again in Alice’s eyes, and they took a heaving breath as they tried to  _ contend _ with everything that had just happened, the family and friends they had left behind, the gut wrenching terror of dying, the feeling of their body failing them one last time, the gurgle of blood in their lungs as a bystander desperately tried to pull them out of the car. It had not been a simple snap of the neck. It had taken minutes, long, slow, with them trapped in the crumpled vehicle, gasping for air as blood rushed in on them, struggling to breathe, drowning in the very thing that was supposed to keep them alive.

The irony.

Their shoulders were shaking, and Tae wasn’t touching them. They had been touched more today than they had in a year. Even the sparring club had gone no contact, leaving Alice to practice all of their skills on their own. They were  _ very _ good at katas now. And shadow sparring.

It was too much. This body wasn’t touch starved, but their  _ soul… _ Their soul had been more damaged than they realized. Everything hurt. They didn’t know how to respond to anything. No one was wearing a  _ mask. _ They were here, breathing the same air as Tae Diath, that was  _ Tae Diath, _ sharing the same space, knowing he was a dead man walking and not sure what to do about it.

… They had always truly hated Palpatine, but they had gotten in on the hate gang memes all the same. Now, though… Now he was terrifying on a level they hadn’t even  _ considered. _

“If I’m here,” they said, their voice raw, their face puffy and eyes swollen, “if I’m here…”

They needed to stop. Think. Consider. Memories of unique helplessness flashed before their eyes, the kind of helplessness that came from being an unwilling cog in a machine that was breaking before their eyes, and they couldn’t fix it…

They could fix it.

Scheduling covid vaccinations had been a living nightmare. Things were breaking and getting started up again on a day to day basis. Everything was constantly falling apart. There was no communication as everyone scrambled to do their part, but no one knew what their part exactly  _ was. _ They were entirely unprepared for vaccinations on this scale, and the websites were broken, confusion was rampant, some counties didn’t even have their own county specific hotlines up. People would spend six hours sometimes on a site, refreshing and putting in the same information over and over again, trying to get a vaccination, with no availability, appointments to click on that didn’t exist, wrong, wrong, wrong. And Alice would sit there, unable to schedule anyone over half of the time, explaining the eligibility criteria again and again, sorry, no availability, no, I can’t even touch the schedule, it’s broken right now, they’re trying to fix it.

It had been character building in a sort of traumatizing way, like all good character building was, of course. Alice hadn’t realized how heavily it had weighed on them until about the three month mark, when they had gone into after call work and cried for fifteen minutes and then gotten back to it. They got dinged for it, didn’t even blink, just continued as they were going to continue. It was easier to just pretend.

They had always been invested in the gffa. And now they were…

“Do I feel as strong?” He whimpered, sniffled, rubbed at their nose as tears leaked over his cheeks, and Tae paused, stared down at them. This was horrendously awkward. Alice was a stranger to him, and he was a character to them. And still he was getting a front row seat to a full on mental breakdown. Alice wasn’t sure where to step here, what to do. They had never been one for shame, but this was… a bit much.

“Yes,” he replied honestly. “You have the same connection as him. Do you… Is he… Displaced in your body?”

“I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” they replied and then coughed, smiled a watery smile. “I mean, that body is definitely not going to be moving again. You…”

Tae had seen. It was a horrible way to die. Drowning was reportedly peaceful, but people generally meant water. Not your own blood. Alice had been terrified. Shaking, gasping, coughing, struggling for air, struggling to keep going, even if they didn’t have much to live for. Not in that world. Sure, they could get a degree,  _ were _ getting a degree, but they were going into a male dominated field where nothing was guaranteed, much less a job that could pay off the loans.

“So you don’t think we can… work something out,” Tae said slowly, and Alice swallowed harshly.

“I feel alone in here,” they replied softly, because there were no other words for it. They knew they were processing and accepting too fast, that a breakdown was imminent, but this was the only way they knew how to manage. Procrastination, living on the adrenaline rush of rent due and bills looming over their head. They needed to make a decision  _ now, _ they couldn’t sleep on it, they had a  _ week _ until war came to the galaxy, and they were expected to be in the middle of it. If they didn’t show up to Geonosis, Obi-Wan would likely die. If he didn’t have anyone to call, the Jedi would not come, and war would always come. That was a fact of life. If there were people making decisions, there would be war. Alice had long since accepted that. You could work and push society to be held accountable, to do better, you could minimize the damage, but war was not something that could be avoided, only put off.

And if the war  _ didn’t _ happen, the clones… They knew exactly what would happen while Kamino was not in the Republic. Millions of lives, decommissioned and snuffed out, maybe sold to the highest bidder, and…

They couldn’t let that happen.

Tae sat and listened to their racing thoughts, rabbiting left and right, and Alice swallowed hard as an old thought that had never really dislodged from their heart surfaced.

“I want to be honest, but sometimes honesty is not kindness, and kindness…” Kindness was more important, sometimes.

“That’s a dangerous thought to have,” Tae said softly, and Alice slowly pushed themself up, sat next to him with a hard expression.

“I have a week to get my shit together,” they said bluntly, and turned to him, because if the Force had put them here, it had put  _ him _ here, and he was here for a reason. “Help me.”

“You’re not going to learn how to shield for that kind of Force signature in a week,” Tae warned, and Alice twisted their hands together.

“I have to do  _ something. _ ”

“... I can create a mental link with you?” He offered hesitantly, and they blinked.

“You don’t even know me,” they said, and Tae stared at them in dubious disbelief.

“Unshielded like you are, I know you better than I know most people,” he said dryly. “If I create a mental link, I can shore up your shields and teach you how to build them with a more hands on approach. I don’t think… it’s an accident that I was here and you were there. I’m a telepath. Mental links are kind of my specialty. I’ve had to do them since I was little to deal with the barrage. And it… Here.”

A gentle brush that sent the hair on their arms standing up, and Alice tried to visualize shields like they had learned in their own approximation, imagined a door to let him in, and a slight smile twitched at his lips.

“Some things don’t change,” he said dryly, and gave them another ginger tug. There was… something. A memory flickered in their mind of a tarot deck next to some spilled red wine, fuzzy socks slipping down their calves, a candle burning as they traced over well loved and worn cards with one finger, and a sense of  _ rightness _ in this moment settled over them, breathtaking in its power and soft comfort.

“I don’t… understand everything you know,” Tae said quietly, and they turned their head to really  _ look _ at him. Silver hair and sad, endless gray eyes, the padawan braid pulled back in a ponytail, a face that was already creased with smile lines despite being a teenager. So young and so full of hope, and they thought about an assassin in the sun, in everything he had lost, and a gentle, cool touch, quieting their building panic. “Alice.”

“Tae,” they said slowly.

“I don’t understand,” he repeated, and his lips twitched up into something ageless as he gently touched the back of their hand, “but I understand enough that… it’s really nice to meet you.”

Alice let out a tearful, half laugh, and Tae took a deep breath.

“If you’re okay with it, we can try for tomorrow morning, before you have to go back to the senator. You  _ really _ need sleep. Nico and I don’t really  _ have _ quarters here, so I can stay to try and shield you so no one picks up that your shields aren’t going back up.”

Alice, abruptly, realized that they were going to meet the primary catalyst of their first gay crisis tomorrow, and now they were in  _ this _ body, which added a whole other degree of weirdness to the situation. Oh, fuck. Tae snorted out a laugh, and color rose up their neck as they tried to remember just how fucking  _ awful _ Anakin had been upon meeting Padmé again. That was going to be difficult to explain.

“Alternatively, if we start the mental link now, I also have a very good excuse to follow you to Naboo so at least  _ someone _ can use a lightsaber,” Tae added dryly, and Alice rose up in offense, shoving a memory in his general direction of the last spar they had done, where they tried out Makashi and their modified version of Tràkata, swapping hands and handily disarming Anthony, who really needed to be taken down a peg or two. The rush, the exhilaration of the memory flowed over them, and Alice blinked at the sheer force of it as their brain automatically jumped to one of their choreographed exhibitions with Vin, speed and power and artful dances across the stage, lightsabers clashing, the burr of the audio on them, elbows and knees and swapping hands, the moment they ended up with each other’s sabers, the feel of Vin’s double bladed staff spinning in their hand with an unnecessary flourish that just  _ felt _ right, the gasps and exclamations from the audience, and…

“I meant real practice in deflecting blaster bolts,” Tae said drolly, and Alice huffed.

“I’m going to have Padmé shoot at me on the way over. Crash course.”

“... Well, that’s not the  _ best _ idea, but it could be worse,” Tae admitted. “Just be sure there’s a medkit on board.”

“And we are  _ not _ taking refugee transports,” Alice added. “Not unless she comes in a poncho and leggings that have at  _ least _ one patch. Fucking ridiculous.”

“... You’ve got a lot of opinions.”

“I have  _ sense, _ ” Alice shot back, rising up in indignation, and Tae stared at him in silent judgment.

“And you need  _ sleep. _ Lay down. I’ll go. Cover for you to your… Anakin’s master?”

“...” Alice was going to have to tell him after Geonosis. The idea of running around in his padawan’s body and lying to his face just seemed horrifically wrong and twisted. If you looked past the heart that was clearly beating and the brain that was definitely not dead, they were basically in a corpse. The corpse of his padawan, a child he had raised from ten years old, and they… They couldn’t do that to him. Even if they got kicked out of the Order it wasn’t… it wasn’t  _ right. _

“I think you should think about that tomorrow,” Tae said softly, and Alice winced as they thought of the man somewhere in these quarters, blissfully ignorant to a dead padawan, a dead  _ child _ he had  _ raised, _ and they felt like they were going to be sick.

Anakin hadn’t even slaughtered the village yet.

Fuck, they had to save Shmi. Not… It wasn’t  _ right, _ but it also wasn’t  _ wrong. _ They had to…

They didn’t know what to do. They were a fierce Jedi apologist in their time, but that had been when the Jedi were a bunch of fictional characters, made by a white man with a complete misunderstanding of Eastern faiths, taking what he wanted and leaving things out, doing what he pleased without any thought to the consequences.

The Jedi were very real now, and though they knew the concepts, the canon and fanon inside and out, they were also woefully unqualified to deal with it.

“You panic very easily,” Tae said and Alice took a deep breath.

“I’m not  _ panicking, _ there are just a lot of things to think about, and I am on a very tight schedule, and I got one padawan to help me, maybe a senator, and there are some very intense ethical questions being asked of me that I have considered a great many times as a hypothetical, but hypothetical is hypothetical and this is in  _ practice, _ and I---”

“Need to sleep,” Tae cut in and gently pushed at their shoulder. “You just got pushed into the wrong body in the wrong universe with a massive connection to the Force that someone who had been  _ born _ with the connection could barely handle sometimes, and you need to sleep and let your brain adjust while you’re in REM. Now. Sleep.”

“I don’t know Aurebesh,” Alice blurted. “I know the ins and outs of the Mandalorian history, a comprehensive understanding of the Old Republic and the Sith before the line of Bane, and the line of Bane, and how all of the lightsaber forms developed in response to the requirements of the Jedi, but I have  _ no _ idea how to write in Aurebesh, but I can write in  _ High Galactic, _ and I’m pretty sure Anakin couldn’t do that.”

“We will figure it out  _ tomorrow, _ and there’s translation modules you can use.  _ Lay down. _ You’re making  _ me _ anxious.”

“There’s a lot of anxiety!” Alice protested, and then paused as their nerd brain rose up in glee. “There’s translation modules? How do they work? Do you attach it to a comlink?”

“Force, your brain,” Tae muttered, and Alice turned massive, pleading eyes on him.

“These are relevant questions.”

“I can Force suggestion you to sleep,” he threatened. “Do you know how late it is?”

“I’m hungry.”

“... Actually, I am, too,” Tae admitted uncomfortably, and the two of them stared at each other in silence for a long moment. “Does that nerd brain include blueprints of the temple?”

“No.”

“I’ll show you how to sneak into the kitchens. Come on.”

A smile twitched at Alice’s lips, and Tae stood up, extended a hand. The Force hummed again, twisting in some kind of childish glee, and Alice settled into the  _ rightness _ of it.

Yeah. They were supposed to be here. Of course, they were definitely going to have at least four panic attacks before they even got to Geonosis, but… They were meant to be here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I normally hate the soulmate trope but also these two are giving major Force dyad vibes and I Don't Know What To Do About That except move with it?? It'll be understated, but yeah, assume they're a dyad, no biggie.


	4. Chapter 4

Tae woke slowly. There was no sun coming in through the windows, not yet, but there was a tangle of thoughts beside him, up on the bed, and a cold hand was half on his face. Slowly, he blinked like an owl, twisted his head to look over at the person passed out on the bed next to him.

Alice Diggory. That was a name, and they were deep in sleep, the first bits of the telepathic bond he had formed before they fell asleep to stabilize them holding strong. The hand on his face was freezing, and he reached up to gently move it, tuck it under the blankets as he sat up and stretched. Alice didn’t so much as stir, thoroughly unconscious, and Tae crossed his legs under him as he felt out for the presence in the back of his mind.

It wasn’t entirely unusual. He didn’t have this kind of bond of peers with Nico, so it felt different than what he was used to, but he spent his whole life in the minds of others. It was stronger, much stronger than the bonds he had with Jon and Fay and Knol, and pulsing in the sheer power Alice had inherited. The other masters were too far away to really  _ feel, _ but Nico was there, awake and meditating in the early morning hours, carrying that tint of exhaustion that was only ever present on Coruscant. He hadn’t slept long, Tae could tell, and were Nico not meditating, he would have sent a shiver of admonishment down the bond.

Alice was dreaming. Through the bond, it felt like echoes, and it was giving him a bit of a headache. Some people dreamed softly, but Alice dreamed like they were screaming for someone to hear them, and Tae didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t want to read into it, be too invasive, but…

The things he had seen from Alice had been  _ disturbing. _ Tae did not want to abuse his gift, but they had known exactly what they were getting into with this bond, and they had trusted him with their innermost thoughts. They knew they had to be monitored, watched, and they were… strangely comfortable with it.

Tae was vastly uncomfortable with it. Mainly because he was a  _ padawan, _ and this was something he should take to the Council  _ immediately, _ but Alice’s… prophecy, in a way, had painted a bleak picture, and he didn’t even have the full story. Just half a report and pieces to put back into place. They, a non-Jedi, who knew of Jedi as _ fiction, _ had been placed into a body that was destined to spell the downfall of the Republic, and it wasn’t like a Jedi to give into fear, but…

But.

_ “I don’t believe in destiny,” Alice said as they sat on the counter of the kitchen, munching on fried tubers Tae had whipped up, and he tilted his head. _

_ “You don’t?” He asked, and Alice shrugged their shoulders as they popped another piece into their mouth. _

_ “The concept of destiny removes responsibility, I think. It’s a safe way for people to view the world, to make sense of it, but ultimately, we all make choices. No one makes them for us. Except in terms of…” _

_ Their mind twisted to memories of red painted helmets set on blasters shoved into the ground, on a young Togruta he vaguely remembered as Ahsoka Tano declaring that others might, but she wouldn’t, of desperation and pain, and then they spiraled away, too much for Alice to deal with all at once, because the body they had inherited had possessed the man that had initiated it. _

_ “Someone made the choices that brought them there,” Alice said softly, and Tae looked down at his bowl of tubers. “That wasn’t destiny. I don’t want to believe that something we can’t touch, can’t possibly understand, could be so cruel.” _

_ “There’s always hope,” Tae reminded them, because that felt like the right thing to say, the Jedi thing to say to comfort, and Alice gave him a quiet, sad smile. _

_ “What is the sense of there being hope if you aren’t the one that gives it?” They countered, and he felt like they were comforting him. “Destiny is just… circumstances that allow you to make choices, choices made by other people that you have to react to. That’s it.” _

_ “You’re not going to blend in well as a Jedi,” Tae said dryly, and they tilted their head. _

_ “Really? I thought that was all being a Jedi was,” they said, and Tae paused. _

_ “What do you mean?” _

_ “Being a Jedi. I thought all it was was choosing to do the kind thing, over and over again, even when it’s hard. If that doesn’t bring hope, I don’t know what else would.” _

It was funny, to see the Jedi viewed in the lens of fiction. Somehow, it made everything Tae chose to do, every day, that much more real. It gave it that much more weight, that much more definition, shaped it in a way that he couldn’t comprehend, not fully.

It was also funny, to learn so much about being what a Jedi _ was _ from the perspective of someone who was not a Jedi, not even a little.

He had barely met Alice Diggory, and there was already so much fondness in his heart for the young person laying in the bed, caught in a snare of memories and hopes, and Tae pressed his back to the bed, let himself feel the heat of their body on his back, and closed his eyes.

They were dreaming of cards. He didn’t recognize the art, but they seemed to know them intimately. He could feel their fingers smoothing over the textured flimsi, the care, the exasperation as they flicked down one after another. A thumb brushed over a card, a thought twisted up, six of cups. There was a sense of fondness at the card, a love blossoming in their chest, and he vaguely recalled that these were cards they were familiar with, a sort of jack-of-all-trades kind of way to look into yourself, the future, the past, the present, to convene with higher powers, to bless their life, and he watched as they picked up the card, pressed it to their lips.

The card blurred, blipping out of existence, and they jerked in horror. There was a tangle of awareness, a suspicion that they were in a dream before it washed away as the card appeared, this time between their fingers, inverted, and something uncomfortable rose in Tae’s chest. He didn’t know the significance, but it felt like dream Alice wanted to vomit. It glitched again, appearing upright, and anxiety spiked, horror, unspeakable horror and grief, and it inverted again between their fingers. The image on the card blurred, colors melting into each other, and it glitched again, and again, some other card taking its place bit by bit, an image of some horrifying beast that was crawling out of the card, jowls dripping with spit that sizzled with acid, eyes blazing between red and Sith yellow, opening its maw to devour them, and---

Alice jerked awake with a gasp, twisting in the blankets into a sitting position, panting hard, and Tae waited as they sat behind him and shivered and shook, hands twisting in the blankets like they were going to save them. A long silence drew out, and Tae didn’t look at them.

“Not all dreams are prophetic,” he said softly, and Alice twitched.

“And all prophecies are self fulfilling,” they replied. “Unless you treat them as possibilities.”

Alice swung their legs over the side of the bed, and Tae stood, offering a hand.

“I can teach you how to meditate,” he said, and they paused before taking the offered hand.

“I used to meditate, but…” They trailed off guiltily. “My brain goes too fast. Too many things to think about, too many thoughts, I’m… they call it autistic?”

“I’m not sure what that is,” Tae said slowly, and Alice grimaced as he pulled them to their feet.

“It’s a disability. They don’t know much about it, but it causes bad social skills, hyper fixations, sensitivity to sensory input. I can’t… focus well when there’s anything that can be focused on. This whole city is kind of painful to me, with the generators and buzz of the lights. When I get into a groove, I’m fine, but groove is dependent on a lot of things, up to and including planets in retrograde…”

The last part was a joke, he was fairly sure, but a hum escaped him.

“There’s a lot of species that are permanently hardwired like that, and a lot of Humans like that,” he said, and Alice blinked. “We don’t really have a word for it, but it happens, and we accommodate for it. We just have to figure out a way that you can focus. Maybe a movement meditation?”

“Like… katas?” They asked cautiously, and he shrugged nonchalantly.

“If it works for you. We can give it a shot. You already know most of them, anyways. Your muscle memory is there, and your brain already knows how to do it. It may help with getting used to your new body, and if the two of us meditate together, it will strengthen the bond. Do you want to have a light breakfast and head down to the salles before anyone gets there?”

“Sure,” Alice said with a yawn and Tae swept for the door.

“I call the fresher first,” he called over his shoulder, and Alice yawned and stretched.

“Sure. I’ll see about some tea.”

Yes, Obi-Wan finding Alice making morning tea wouldn’t be suspicious at all. Tae sent the thought down the bond, and there was a pause before they returned in turn with their own thought.

_ ‘I don’t want to lie.’ _

Tae caught a glimpse of it as they saw it, and something hollowed in his gut as he realized that Anakin was  _ dead, _ and someone…

Someone had loved him.

And now Alice was in his place.

He hadn’t even truly considered it.

Something sad settled in his stomach, something morose, and he pursed his lips at the sudden strike of grief, grief for Obi-Wan’s sake, that overcame Alice, a thought about some kind of forum post laying out how much Yoda must have loved him, too, about all of the people that had been left behind that would be subjected to  _ this, _ this not-Anakin, this imposter wearing his skin, thoughts of some ancient species from their homeworld, the inherent horror in an imposter and something else wearing a loved one’s face, wearing  _ your _ face, how there were never good intentions, how the face and the eyes were the windows to the soul, and Alice had violently shoved Anakin out, and he was a  _ person, _ and they just had to---

“I don’t think you had much to do with it,” Tae said softly, and the thoughts abruptly nosedived into something soft, mournful, quiet and sad, and he thought about taking them with him to the fresher, sitting them on the counter so they wouldn’t have to be alone.

Not that they would ever be alone now. Not with the bond that had been a split second decision he may come to regret.

“I’m still the one that has to live with it,” Alice said, just as soft, and there was a flash of anger that was swiftly forgotten, because it was needless energy they didn’t have to spare, and Tae was struck with an urge to  _ see _ them. See their youth, their grief that was still processing, the denial they were shoving away, because they didn’t have  _ time _ for it, the ache, and…

Tae reached out a gentle hand and caught the edge of their tunic, drew them in for a deep, drawn out hug. Alice stiffened up, like they didn’t know what to do with their hands or arms, and then simply  _ melted _ into it, digging their face into his shoulder and clinging to his tunic like it was the only thing keeping them alive.

It hurt, a little.

But Tae was never going to tell them that he was hurting with them.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, because they had been robbed of a peaceful ending, of an afterlife where they got to rest. The Force had demanded they just had to start over, build new relationships, build a new life, in the body of a dead man, and they just had to  _ deal with it. _

The Force was not kind. People were kind. The Force was simply a collection of things unknowable, and he was never going to say that this was  _ okay. _ That it was  _ right. _ They didn’t deserve this. Their heart was far too tender to take longing eyes and quiet suffering, quiet pain, the kind that Obi-Wan was never going to overcome.

They hadn’t deserved this.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and they were warm, warm against his body, and warm in the Force, and he thought about a young person on a counter, saying destiny wasn’t real, that they were in command of their own choices, their own decisions, someone that hurt for a man they had barely met, mourned for the loss of a teenage boy that became a monster simply because they knew people would mourn him, and…

Well. Hope was never a bad thing, was it?


	5. Chapter 5

“You did _what?_ ” Master Windu asked, and Tae kept his back perfectly straight and face neutral.

“We made a psychic bond,” he repeated as Alice shrunk down behind him inch by inch.

“You could have started with _comm codes,_ ” Master Windu said, and Tae honestly did not feel even remotely offended that Master Windu was so upset about the whole situation. It was a _huge_ leap to make a bond like this. If one of them died, the other could die, too, just from the psychic backlash. As far as anyone knew, Anakin Skywalker and Tae Diath had met _last night,_ and teenage hormones could excuse a lot, but not something so _dangerously_ half thought out. Add to that that Alice was addled with Force exhaustion and completely wiped out, and…

Well. It didn’t look good. Even Nico was silently steaming next to Tae, but this was not something that was easily undone. They had embarrassed both Obi-Wan _and_ Nico, made them look like they had utterly failed as teachers, but Tae was not going to apologize, because if he _did,_ they would only expect more questions.

“Padawan Skywalker,” Master Windu said sharply, and Alice took a moment to respond before their back straightened up and they looked him dead in the eye.

“Yes, Master Windu,” they said, and Master Windu _glared_ at them.

“What possessed you to agree to this?”

There was a twist in Alice’s mind, a thought that rose up that was _definitely_ a bad one, and oh, no, no, no, Tae reacted sharply, a very loud _no_ sent down the bond, but Alice’s mouth was already opening to speak.

“We thought it would be for the best to get used to it now, since we were planning on a Knight partnership once we actually get there. Better to do it when we still have Masters to help us adjust,” they replied, and you could hear a pin drop as Obi-Wan’s head swiveled and Nico visibly reacted in horror at the statement.

“You two are getting _married?_ ” Obi-Wan asked in disbelief, and Alice realized their misstep, because they had _no_ idea that was a marriage between Jedi, and then they just _went with it._

“Platonically, of course.”

“You’re getting platonically married and neither of you thought to tell your masters?” Master Windu asked as Master Ti put a delicate hand over her mouth and twisted her head to look out the window.

“Was that a requirement?” Alice asked as Tae wondered how many leaps it would take to get out of _this_ hole they were digging them into. He was going to die of embarrassment, he was sure. At least he was going to be taking Alice with him. That was one way to stop everything, and, oh, no, that wouldn’t work.

“You are eighteen and nineteen years old,” Obi-Wan said sharply as Nico’s bond waffled between wanting to cry with laughter and die in a hole. “That’s the sort of decision you wait on, you haven’t even done your _Trials---_ ”

“I don’t know, I’ve been feeling a bit older lately,” Alice deadpanned, and Tae choked. He wasn’t going to survive this.

“Nico, what kind of things are you _teaching_ your padawan?” Master Windu demanded, and Nico rose back in offense.

“Why are you asking me and not Obi-Wan?”

“Obi-Wan’s control over Anakin is tenuo---”

“Alice,” Alice interrupted, and everything ground to a halt as Master Windu stared at them.

“What?”

“I have made the decision that Anakin as a name is not a vibe, and I only like he/him on some occasions, and would like to generally be referred to as they/them. If it’s not too much trouble.”

Master Mundi took a deep, calming breath and buried his face in his hands as Master Koth rubbed a hand over his face and turned his eyes up to the ceiling. Master Yoda simply sat back, crossed his hands over the knob of his cane with a sageous look that Nico apparently did _not_ trust, and Alice blinked big, wide eyes at the Council.

“It _isn’t_ too much trouble, right?” They asked, and there was a twist of fondness over the bond. They _liked_ them. All of them.

“Are there any other earth shattering revelations you would like to relay to us while everyone is one place, Padawan Alice?” Master Windu asked patiently, because gender and pronouns were something he took seriously, but this was a _nightmare,_ and Alice hesitated, an image of Master Windu falling from a window, seizing with electrocution, and a long cackle from the Chancellor, what did the…

Right. He was the Sith Lord, which was a whole other thing to deal with. Honestly, Tae had lost track of the colossal mess he had landed in once he found out he was a _fictional character._

In any case, the Force didn’t feel _right_ at the thought, the warning, and Tae pressed a little thought, a bare hint of compromise down the bond, and Alice tilted their head in consideration.

“Yes. I am of the firm belief that Chancellor Palpatine has been overstepping his bounds with his presence in my life, and he has started to make me uncomfortable, and I would like it if something in the ways of interference could be set up until I have decided to correct him on his inappropriate behavior towards me,” they said firmly, and Master Windu slowly blinked. There was blatant shock in the chamber, memories surfacing of Obi-Wan’s constant complaints of Anakin’s hero worship of the man, how _powerless_ everyone had felt every time Chancellor Palpatine had requested Anakin’s presence and no one had a very good reason to tell him _no,_ and here was Alice, making it so… easy.

That was the whole point, though, wasn't it? Alice was _here_ to make things _easy,_ to hopefully set things right before everything could go _wrong._

“We can certainly arrange something,” Master Windu said carefully, his eyes sweeping over Alice's face like he was looking for something. “However, this bond… that you have entered with Padawan Diath. This is serious, and you struggle with attachment as is, Padawan Skywalker.”

Alice was silent for a moment, their thoughts twisting and turning under the surface, ugly and painful, and Tae reached out to gently nudge at them, slide in another layer of shield, ease them to let go of the emotion rising up in their chest, acknowledge it and release to the Force. They did it easily, as easily as they had for the morning katas meditation, like it was second nature to them, they only needed a little instruction on the how-to, and their attention turned back on the Council.

“I understand,” they said firmly, unwavering, seeming so much older, and a suspicious thought rose in Obi-Wan's mind, that something wasn't _right_ here, beyond the general chaos, and Tae swallowed. “I am still working on it and learning. But this is something I want to do beyond attachments.”

_‘Anchors don't say moored forever,’_ was a thought that drifted through their mind, and Tae almost let a smile slip out at how easily they accepted things.

Master Windu didn't seem to know what to do with that. No one in the Council seemed to know. The hot-headed, arrogant, gifted Padawan had just up and vanished, leaving this sad, self assured, confident, and humble person in his place, and no one quite knew what was going on.

“Did something happen?” Master Windu asked, and Alice blinked slowly, once, then twice.

“Yes,” they said bluntly, and Tae internally winced. “I'm pretty sure I got into a fistfight with the Force in a parking lot at 2 in the morning, and the Force definitely won.”

Master Ti loudly coughed into her hand, and Master Koth took a deep, calming breath.

“Regardless of how ill advised a psychic bond is at this age,” he said, his steady timber filling the room, “padawans. Padawan… Alice,” and the choice to forgo the surname was so sweet, Tae found he liked this particular councilor even _more,_ “you are in the middle of a highly sensitive diplomatic assignment. There is an assassin on the loose, and you are meant to be guarding the Senator. Padawan Diath also has his own duties, even if we aren't entirely sure what they _are,_ ” and a severe glance was sent to Nico, “and the timing for this is actually terrible. If you truly wanted to do this, the two of you could have put in a request to put missions on hold or be sent on a low level assignment with each other. A separation at this time is ill advised. Masters Diath and Kenobi, how do you wish to proceed?”

Nico paused, and a thought was sent to Tae.

_‘What do you want to do, now that you've landed us in an even bigger mess?’_ The thought was sour, and Tae viciously pushed back a thought of a certain rancor nest on a mission that Nico _swore_ would be just fine, and there was a shiver of amusement. He was angry, but he also _dearly_ loved pissing off the council, and Tae had gone above and beyond this time. Another thought was filtered over to his uncle, and Nico paused, looked over at Master Kenobi, and then at Master Yoda, a sort of sour look on his face.

“Tae and I have no immediate pressing concerns on our hands at this time,” he said and folded his arms into his robes. “I believe I should accompany Master Kenobi to track down this mysterious bounty hunter, and Tae and Alice should take the honorable senator off planet to a more secure location. After all, it would likely behoove us to start… getting along, given the current circumstance.”

He looked sour, unhappy at the idea, and Obi-Wan didn’t look all that much better, his face twisted up into something trying to be neutral as a million and one thoughts ran through his head. Shields _helped_ Tae manage, but even the best of Jedi shields hid very little from him, and the leapfrogging thoughts emanating from the esteemed Jedi Master were headache inducing at _best._ Something was wrong, his gut was telling him, but his padawan was so much calmer, so much more collected, so much more _steady,_ and he almost wanted to _believe,_ but…

Ah. Yes, that was heartbreaking. It was almost easier to tune him out and focus on Alice's consistent internal screaming, thoughts jackrabbiting about with alarming intensity as they had half a dozen theories confirmed, had a dozen more spring up, and _did this mean they were doing an accidental fake marriage trope? Who was writing this bullshit? Terrible fucking taste. Alice would never._

It was getting difficult to not laugh.

“A wise choice, it is. To Naboo, the padawans will go. To Kamino, the masters,” Yoda said and nodded slowly, and the arc of his thoughts were downright _frightening_ as he schemed in how to bully Nico into swamp stew. No wonder Nico was so upset. Force.

_‘I don’t know why Obi-Wan is so upset. He and Quinlan did the same thing, and lasted a week,’_ Master Koon’s thought speared through the chamber, and Tae had spent a long time hearing the juiciest of gossip, but _that_ was a new one.

He had the perfect sabacc face. He was _not_ going to react. But, Force, it was tempting. Obi-Wan Kenobi and _Quinlan Vos?_ Oh, he was telling Nico that before he left to go pick a fight with a Mandalorian.

“Try not to do anything too brash, padawans,” Master Windu said dryly, and Alice resolutely looked out the window as thoughts arced across their mind of a trip to Dathomir and Tatooine and all of the utterly insane things they were looking to pull off for this week away from their Responsible Adult Figures. Tae didn’t react at the thought of Alice possibly managing to pull off punching some woman named Talzin in the face, and a bare hint of a smile twitched at his lips as he sent over a thought of Padmé Amidala, a former _queen,_ taking potshots at Alice.

“We will be the model figure of senior padawans,” Alice assured Master Windu, and a thought from the master danced across Tae’s mind.

_‘I am going to probably cry over the follow up report.’_

Yes, he probably would.

Ah, Tae now felt a little bad. He and Alice had come up with a more tentative plan last night over fried tubers and blue milk, and it all hinged on Padmé _agreeing_ with them, and clearing it with her security, and Alice somehow being _believed._ Which was going to be difficult, for a variety of reasons, the chief most reason being that Tae was even wondering if Anakin Skywalker was having a mental break, and Tae was a _Jedi._ The only saving grace here was that the Force was humming with _rightness_ at Alice’s story, and Padmé was _not_ Force sensitive. Not like Tae. She was a practical woman, from how Alice put it, willing to get down and dirty in a pinch, but this was all a bit… difficult to believe.

Fictional characters? Alice being from a universe where the Force didn’t even _exist?_ It was a lot to take in, even for the best of dreamers. Everything was hinging on Padmé agreeing and not immediately going to the Council with news that Anakin Skywalker was having a mental breakdown. Or her staff, really, who needed to know what was going on. And, well.

Taking a sitting Senator to a planet overrun with Darkside witches and slavers and violent people outside of Republic law was likely not the best idea they had ever had. Granted, Alice had just gotten here, and probably was going to come up with a _lot worse_ ideas, given just how their brain leapt from one point to the next at the speed of light, but even so.

Tae was an enabler, apparently. He had just met Alice, and while he wouldn’t trust them with his life, he would _absolutely_ trust them to thoroughly ruin anyone’s day. He just needed to make sure that energy towards ruining someone’s day was directed on the right target: the Sith lord who was apparently the _Chancellor of the Republic Senate._

“You four are dismissed,” Master Windu said, interrupting his thought process and sending it careening away as Alice was overcome with a fit of emotion at the thought arcing across Tae’s mind. “May the Force be with you. Please keep the complaints we will have to process after this to a minimum.”

“May the Force be with you, as well,” Nico and Obi-Wan said, bowing deeply, and Tae and Alice followed suit. There was a long, awkward pause, and then Obi-Wan turned on his heel, his thoughts whirring with no end in sight as he stalked out of the chambers. There was a pause, and then Alice stole after him guiltily, and Tae sent one last thought towards them to keep everything under wraps, no matter how guilty they felt.

_‘I know. I’ll be careful,’_ they promised, and Nico turned his ire on Tae.

“So when were you planning on telling me that you’re betrothed to the Chosen One?” He asked as the Council doors swung shut and Obi-Wan and Alice absconded themselves in the lift. Tae winced, and something ugly overtook him.

“It was a fairly recent thing.”

“I didn’t even know you knew him,” Nico said, and Tae hissed in between his teeth.

“It’s a recent development,” he replied, and Nico huffed irritably.

“I will _not_ be subjected to Yoda’s blasted stew,” he muttered and keyed open the lift doors. “And you _be careful_ in the Senate. Everyone there is a snake, and you will overhear many things that you shouldn’t.”

“I will exercise all the caution that a situation requires,” Tae promised with a completely straight face, and Nico gave him a dour look.

“See that you do,” Nico drawled. “No adventures, no risking the Senator’s life, none of that. Do you understand me? This isn’t like a mission on the Outer Rim. You won’t have any of us to catch you if you teeter. You need to be _careful,_ and I have heard more than enough about that duo that I _know_ you’ll run into trouble.”

Nico didn’t need to know how actively Tae was plotting trouble. He didn’t need to know that at all. On the plus side, Tae had already survived Dathomir once, and knew a thing or two about smuggling out a Nightbrother, so he was fairly confident Dathomir would be the easy part. It was only a matter of where to go first. Dathomir was closer to Coruscant, so probably there first, and then Tatooine, and then they had to figure out where to _hide_ two kidnapped Zabraks…

Perhaps Tae could pull a few strings and get them on with a pirate crew. He knew some people. Hondo would likely be delighted to have two Nightbrothers to screw around with. It wouldn’t be all that more violent than Dathomir, and there was a decidedly lower risk of being chosen for ‘mating’ against their will, so there was that. Or he could get them on a merchant vessel…

There were a lot of options at his perusal. He just had to be cautious. Honestly, all of this just to control _one_ single variable in the war while they had to do it. Alice really needed to slow down a bit.

Oh, well. Tae was locked in. No backing out now, and he rather liked kidnapping Nightbrothers. It was the Diath in him, really.

“Tae,” Nico said warningly, and Tae realized he had been caught up in his own thoughts _again._

“Alice and I will exercise the utmost caution,” he promised. “Really, you don’t have to worry about us. You’re about to go hunt down a Mandalorian and figure out who removed a whole star system from the Jedi archives. That’s _much_ more dangerous. Be careful, yes?”

“It’s not _me_ I’m worried about,” Nico said dourly. “Obi-Wan Kenobi is a very young Master, and just because he can talk himself out of most trouble doesn’t mean his mouth didn’t end him in that trouble to begin with.”

“Sounds like someone else I know,” Tae muttered, and offense mixed with amusement sparked up over their bond.

“I _solely_ talk myself out of trouble. My actions put me in the trouble in the first place, not my words. Please, if you are going to insult your master, do it with accuracy,” Nico sniffed, and Tae barked out a sharp laugh.

“Of course, Master. My apologies.”

Oh, they were all _so_ fucked.

At least he got a new curse out of it. Force.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew here we go. Next up: Padme being like fuck it I haven't been in a shootout in a second. Check out my tumblr [ here](https://psychicshr00m.tumblr.com/) for more ways to support me!


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